Decision Erodes Freedom

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U.S. Supreme Court justices undermined a basic right of all Americans recently when they ruled that police don't need a warrant to search a car - even when time exists to get a judge's approval.

That decision badly erodes the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable, warrantless searches. The ruling also invites overzealous police to abuse their authority.

The justices made their ruling after reviewing a Maryland case in which an informant tipped deputy sheriffs that a local resident - a known drug dealer - would go to New York City to buy drugs and then return home the next day in a red, rented car. The informant even gave deputies the car's tag number.

Early the next day, deputies intercepted the car and searched it - without getting a warrant - and found drugs.

The Supreme Court ruled that they had acted properly.

If police can search cars without warrants today, what will protect residents from warrantless searches of their homes tomorrow?

Previous court decisions have given police wide latitude to search vehicles without warrants because the mobile nature of cars can make it difficult for officers to go to a court ahead of time and seek a judge's permission to search.

The Maryland case posed a different situation because deputies knew more than 12 hours in advance which vehicle to search and what it likely would contain. Yet, despite having plenty of time to get a warrant, they chose to take a shortcut.

This issue involves more than a matter of convenience for police. Requiring a judge's permission to search ensures that police have a well-founded reason to intrude on someone's private property. Officers have a dangerous, thankless job, but that doesn't give them the right to trample the rights of people, even those they suspect of having committed crimes.

Requiring authorities to have a warrant to conduct searches forms an essential cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution. Patriots fired the first shots of the American Revolution in Concord, Mass., because the British were on their way to conduct house-to-house searches for weapons they suspected colonists had stockpiled. The patriots resisted because they believed, properly, that it was wrong for soldiers to intrude on private property without just cause.

The justices have stepped on shaky ground in expanding permission for warrantless searches. Courts must not allow the pursuit of drug dealers to erode the constitutional protections Americans treasure.